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A review by displacedcactus
Ace by Angela Chen
informative
medium-paced
This book is a good introduction to asexuality. It covers a lot of topics, including but not limited to:
-What asexuality is and what it's like to be asexual
-The history of asexual communities on the internet
-The intersections of asexuality and gender, race, or disability
-Aromanticism
-How some couples handle an ace/allosexual relationship
-Compulsive heteronormativity, sexuality, and romance in Western culture
The author is pretty clear at the beginning about the limits of her book, and at the end she provides some ideas for further reading. There are also extensive notes for each chapter.
My only real complaint about the book is that it could have used another editing pass. There are some typos and sentences that are either missing words or have extra words, requiring 2-3 rereadings to figure out what the author actually meant.
Over all, this would be a good place to start if you're either considering whether you might be ace, if you want to better understand asexual loved ones, or if you'd like to consider ace/aro characters in your writing projects.
-What asexuality is and what it's like to be asexual
-The history of asexual communities on the internet
-The intersections of asexuality and gender, race, or disability
-Aromanticism
-How some couples handle an ace/allosexual relationship
-Compulsive heteronormativity, sexuality, and romance in Western culture
The author is pretty clear at the beginning about the limits of her book, and at the end she provides some ideas for further reading. There are also extensive notes for each chapter.
My only real complaint about the book is that it could have used another editing pass. There are some typos and sentences that are either missing words or have extra words, requiring 2-3 rereadings to figure out what the author actually meant.
Over all, this would be a good place to start if you're either considering whether you might be ace, if you want to better understand asexual loved ones, or if you'd like to consider ace/aro characters in your writing projects.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Racism
Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual content
All of the -"isms" are discussed as things that people interviewed for the book have experienced, rather than being reflected in the author's opinions or anything like that. Likewise, the discussions of sex and SA are in the framing of asexual people's experiences and are presented in a non-sensationalized way as you would expect from a nonfiction work like this.